“I will also thank you to pass one of the two chests, Nos. 1 and 2; pass one of them among the six.”
Another ran: “We have before us your note of the 3d, relating to order No. 852, for one chest Malwa, and note that you had retained the order, the holder declining to take the opium.
“Having now, however, agreed to take the drug under the same order, you will please deliver it accordingly, but without reduction, as he must take it, having already paid the money. We leave it to your judgment, however, to allow a small reduction, should he insist upon it.”
These ships are well armed and numerously manned, mostly with Lascars. The living on them is very sumptuous. Some years ago Cum-sing-moon was visited by a terrible typhoon, when these hulks broke from their moorings; some were driven entirely out of the harbor, others came in contact, stove and sunk. The United States sloop-of-war Plymouth was lying there at the time, and got considerable salvage for property saved.
The river-pirates make this place their rendezvous during the night. They would seize and rob boats just off the mouth of the harbor: their boats are fast sailers. The fast-boat of our compradore, when bringing us provisions from Macao, had to run a daily gauntlet of the rascals. But a young Portuguese officer, in command of a small armed lorcha, used to pursue them with much success. One night, about nine o’clock, having got intelligence of their whereabouts, while we lay at Cum-sing-moon, he ran quietly into the harbor, and putting his men in Sampan-boats, he fell into a nest of them and peppered the rascals right and left. Their crafts are then taken to Macao and sold, furnishing a kind of prize-money.
The long and fast-sailing mandarin-boats, that smuggle the opium, usually get here in the evening. The captains of the hulks make them anchor some distance from their ships, because of their carelessness in the use of powder; some of them would quietly sit over an open tank of it and smoke their pipes, believing that if they are blown up it is a fatality which they can not prevent. These boats are armed, and well manned, and when there is no wind to expand their large sails, they pull as many as a hundred sweep-oars moving through the water like great centipedes. After their large crews have had their paddy chow-chow, in the most clamorous and discordant manner, they proceed to chin-chin joss, as the sun goes down, by banging on gongs and tom-toms; but before midnight they have paid down their pile of specie, gotten their chests of the drug aboard, and are moving off up the river to Canton.
We left Cum-sing-moon and its enlivening prospects in the middle of November, and went over to Hong Kong, and thence we triangulated, as it were, to Macao and Whampoa, and so back. At Macao we spent our time, when ashore, by promenades on the Praya, where, at eventide, the dark-eyed daughters of the decayed Portuguese aristocracy cast furtive glances at the stranger, and listened to the music of one of our squadron-bands, which the commodore, who was living at Macao, had ashore with him; or strolled through the barrier-gate and out on the campo; or witnessed the wonderful nerve displayed by the knife-throwing Chinese jugglers in the street.
While laying in the roads at Macao, a young Russian officer who had, with a squadron from his country, visited the port of Nangasaki, brought the intelligence that the emperor of Japan had died after our visit, and that the Japanese said they would have to mourn him for three years, during which time they could have no transactions or negotiations with foreigners. We thought the demise might be true—perhaps a hari-kari hastened it, but that the latter thing was all “leather and prunella;” the emperor might have died, but another, like poor Pillicoddy, must turn up, when we next visited the country.
About this time the Plymouth, which had been sent, on our departure from Loo-Choo in August, to the Bonin islands, arrived at Macao, bringing the sad intelligence that a boat from that ship containing one of her lieutenants—Lieutenant Mathews, of New York—and fourteen men, out on a fishing excursion, while the ship was lying at Peel island, had been lost in a sudden typhoon on the 5th of October, and that all hands had perished.
Preparations being on foot for the return of the squadron to Japan, as soon as the storeship Lexington should arrive, and the services of the storeship Supply being needed for the transportation from China of coal for the steamers, a small English steamer recently built at Hong Kong, was chartered on behalf of the United States government, to take her place off the factories at Canton. She was armed with four guns, and a lieutenant, passed-midshipman, and one engineer ordered to her, besides being manned from the squadron—the American flag waved over the “Queen!”